Iraq graft probe exposes 50,000 ‘ghost troops’ crowding army payroll

A headcount during the latest Iraq military payroll period revealed 50,000 ‘ghost soldiers’, who don’t work - or don’t even exist - but are paid, the PM told the parliament. The US has spent billions of dollars arming and training the Iraqi army.

Prime Minister Haider
al-Abadi revealed the large scale of financial corruption in the
national armed forces in a statement after meeting the parliament
on Sunday.

“In terms of reforms in the military establishment, Prime
Minister Haidar al-Abadi uncovered the presence of 50,000
fictitious named in four military units,” a statement from
PM’s office said. The discrepancy was revealed after a few weeks
of investigation into the issue, Abadi’s spokesman Rafid Jaboori
said.

The statement did not nominate who exactly pocketed the money,
which is enough to keep a force equivalent of several divisions
on the payroll. But AFP cites an Iraqi army officer as saying
that this kind of corruption is encountered on many levels of the
chain-of-command.

“There are two kinds of ‘fadhaiyin,’” the officer said,
using a term for fictitious soldiers crowding the payroll, which
literally translates as ‘space men’.

“The first kind: each officer is allowed, for example, five
guards. He’ll keep two, send three home and pocket their salary
or an agreed percentage,” he said. “Then the second and
bigger group is at the brigade level. A brigade commander usually
has 30, 40 or more soldiers who stay at home or don’t
exist.”

Getting soldiers’ cooperation for the scheme is not the only
source for extra names on the payroll. There are troops who
deserted or were killed, but not reported as such, so that their
allowances were still paid.

The graft system is apparently self-replicating. Higher-ranking
commanders take bribes from their subordinate officers to turn a
blind eye to their corruption, and many expect this kind of
pay-off, which forces officers either to get involved in the
scheme or risk losing their jobs.

Over the decade it occupied Iraq, the US spent billions of
dollars on arming and training the Iraqi army. But when militants
from Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL), conducted their
lighting offensive in Iraq in summer, most of the Iraqi army
units fled, leaving behind the US-supplied weapons entrusted to
them.

Corruption in the military is one of the reasons morale in the
Iraqi army was so low. There was also nepotism, as the government
of former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, encouraged
promotion of Shiites to positions of power, while Sunnis were
kept out of good jobs.

The discriminative policies contributed to the dissent among
Iraq’s Sunni minorities, so the message of the IS, which wants to
create a Sunni-only Islamist state in predominantly Sunni
territories of Iraq and Syria, had its share of a sympathetic
audience when they sent the Iraqi army running.

Abadi took office in September after weeks of post-election power
struggle. Among his first moves was the sacking several military
commanders in an attempt to mobilize the armed forces to fight
the IS.

The US-led coalition conducting airstrikes against the IS is
considering retaking the territories by sending boots on the
ground the job to assist the Iraqi army. So far the most vigorous
force opposing the IS’ expansion is the Kurdish militia, both in
Iraq and in Syria.